Simple Moments
by kill-kiss-be
Summary: Drabble insights to the individuals in the Hunger Games trilogy, and the interactions of pairings -  romantic, familial or otherwise. Some written post-MJ. Peeta/Katniss, Gale/Johanna and more.
1. Peeta & Katniss

**Simple Moments** Number _One_: Peeta/Katniss

It is these moments, these simple and yet exquisite moments, when her hair is splayed against her sweaty forehead and Peeta can hear the hitch of Katniss's breath as she affixes a fresh bandage to his gaping leg wound… it is these moments in which he is the most in love with the hunter girl from the Seam.

It is these moments; too, that Peeta is the most terrified for his life.

Vulnerability is not a luxury one can afford in the Arena. Honestly, anything but scepticism and survival is a luxury one cannot afford. But this is the most dangerous. Not only is he badly injured, he's also left himself unable to do anything but trust this girl, this strange girl with a voice that can still the birds, this strange girl who set everything ablaze in her Capitol ventures.

"Peeta," Katniss whispers, teeth gritted in disgust or determination - Peeta's not sure, as she tightens the bandage as securely as it will go. What they wouldn't give for a clip, for a scrap of tape to hold it shut. "You need to take it easier tomorrow. We won't make it another day if you keep putting weight on it."

Peeta sighs yet again, because these are words he's heard since they first met up upon the announcement they could win this together. But instead of arguing, he nods, and slumps against the cold, rough surface of the cave wall. Exhaustion begins to take its toll, and can feel Katniss's eyes watching him as he fights off sleep. He's so damn tired of fighting. Fighting exhaustion, the cold, the will to give in and end this himself. How easy it would be. The right aim of a sharpened rock into his artery, an excess of the sleep syrup Katniss so carefully monitors his dosages of. How simple death would come to a life so complexly formed.

As if she can read his thoughts and wishes to silence them, Katniss leans forward and kisses Peeta. It's a light, lingering kiss, but its connotation and the weight it leaves in his heart is heavy.

"You look much too philosophical for someone fighting his peers to the death." Peeta starts to respond, but then Katniss is kissing him again, and the heat of her breath is enough to shut him up despite his inherent stubbornness. With all the cynicism that comes from being bred in District 12, when Katniss kisses Peeta he is certain of one thing: that he loves her, that he lusts for her, that he'd sooner see himself dead than watch her lose her life.


	2. Johanna & Gale

**Simple Moments** Number _Two_: Johanna/Gale

_"At random times of the day, for no particular reason, Johanna found herself thinking about Gale Hawthorne."_ (Prompted by Esra)

Which was strange, when considered, since she and Gale barely spoke all that much at all…and when they did, it was mostly about Katniss, or the Capitol, or how District 13 was going to change Panem for good. Nothing philosophical or remotely note-worthy or romantic. And yet she did, in the moments between her scheduled activities in 13's underground facilities. And not just his looks (although they did factor in _considerably_.)

At first, it was through clouds of medicine-induced-daze. She'd see him wander in to visit Katniss (who got so, so many visitors, and even Johanna couldn't deny herself jealousy over this.) He had a contemplative look about him. She supposed this was a consequence of his hunter abilities. Always thinking, always on the prowl. It made Johanna's heart leap in a funny way, the way he'd glance around (eyes darting around like a cat's in the dark) as if preparing any moment he might need to attack or defend.

She couldn't stop herself from sitting up when he entered, once, used to her sleeping whenever he'd pass. "You know, people might talk if you visit her so much in the night…"

Gale leapt something that looked like a foot in the air before he turned to the sound of Johanna's voice, which was laced with sarcasm and taunting. "What?"

"You know, for a hunter you spook very easily…I said that if you keep visiting Katniss in the night, people are going to talk. Gossip. And it's not like the Mockingjay can defend herself."

Gale sighed and inched his way towards Johanna's bed. He moved carefully. On edge. As if the ever-unpredictable Johanna might lurch for him if he so much as stepped ever so slightly wrong. "We're just friends."

"You bring her very pretty flowers for just friends. Do you go outside to get them, Gale? What a risk you take, to give flowers to a girl that doesn't offer you a second glance." Johanna laughed then, and Gale was certain of her insanity, but he merely shrugged.

"It's nice to receive flowers when you're sick." Gale answered simply, sitting cautiously on the edge of Johanna's hospital bed as he glanced at the labels on the packages of fluid being leaked into her veins. It all sounded foreign. _Latin_, they'd called it, back in school. The language of the world before.

"They say I'm sick, too. Except unlike Katniss, I won't heal." Johanna pointed at her head, then, and her expression said more than all the sarcasm in the world could defend. This girl had not received flowers, it said; this girl was too messed up to be repaired.

So Gale did what meant more than words (of which they'd both heard too many) could. He reached across and held her hand. He held her hand until she squeezed back, and met his eyes with her own. A moment. A memory. Something that couldn't be seized, or analysed, or locked away.

He brought her flowers (daffodils) from that day forth.


	3. Primrose & Katniss

**Simple Moments** Number _Three: _Primrose and Katniss

To Prim, the guilt of watching her sister prepare for another games is almost unbearable. Her mind cannot avoid drifting to the_ "what ifs" _of had she entered the games herself. She wouldn't have won, that's for sure, but then her death would have been forgotten – like so many others in the arena – and her family would have moved on.

Instead, she watches her sister riddled with nightmares, face torn apart by the whip of the newest "Peacekeeper" (an irony _not_ lost on Prim, even at just thirteen years old.) She cannot fathom of what atrocities Katniss is dreaming, in no way could the arena cameras have captured every horror that had crept its way into her psyche. Prim remembers being young, curled against Katniss's side, as the foolish nightmares of children would taunt her. Monsters under the bed. Being lost in the woods her sister knew so expertly. These were nothing compared to what she knew kept her sister up all hours, resisting sleep, resisting the torturous slumber the Capitol so hellishly inflicted year in, and year out.

It felt so entirely wrong to be the one who comforted her older sister every night, stroking her sweat-curled hair as she thrashed away from unseen terrors. But it was the least Prim could do. There was a debt that could never be deemed owed, a debt her sister would never ask be paid (or even consider due.) But it sat on Prim's shoulders constantly; reminding her of how close she was to death, and how much Katniss suffered to prevent it.

On the last night before Katniss leaves for the games, Prim climbs into her bed long before the nightmares start. Curls against her warm side, feeling all at once a child, and a protector. Katniss's breathing is slow and steady, no terrors plaguing her at this hour. Soon, the real terrors start again. And it's all, entirely, and wholly Prim's fault (she thinks.) Tears threaten their way out and blur Prim's vision, but she bites her tongue so hard she thinks it might bleed. Salty tears, the metallic taste of blood. These are not the things she wants to remember of her last night beside her sister.

She shakes Katniss awake, feeling selfish but needing her sister now more than ever (she'll never stop needing her, and that makes it so much worse.) Her breath catches in her throat as her sister turns to her, rubbing her eyes and looking around in confusion. "Prim? Was I…I didn't think I was dreaming…"

Prim shakes her head, and for the first time in a long while lets the tears fall. Within seconds Katniss's arms are around her, and Prim never wants to forget the warmth of her body, the smell of her hair, what could be the very last moment her sister can keep the monsters away.


	4. Clove

**Simple Moments** Number _Four:_ Clove

_"It is sweet and fitting to die for one's **district**."_

The words have been adjusted from something back in the world before, when the countries of the earth would throw themselves at each other in battle, not unlike the Games today. Except they weren't just twenty-four tributes from the twelve districts, but millions of soldiers from each and every land.

Clove doesn't see anything dignified in the pictures. Bodies rotting, mud-caked-fingernails and blood oozing out of every visible orifice. But still she is forced, head held high with a smirk of Capitol defiance, to stand before her district and declare that yes, this year, it will be _her_ that is the female tribute who slaughters her peers (and maybe, just _maybe_, escapes alive.) _Sweet_. _Fitting_. The old District Two lie.

Cato is much better at taking on the position of District Two soldier. His sheer brutality makes him a favourite, and he is blessed with whatever he might need in terms of physical strength and willpower. He is made, no, _built_, for this role. Warrior. Martyr (even if, in moments of sheer despair, he views himself as the sacrificial lamb.) Clove sees what the cameras don't. The way his fingers curl over his knife at night, as if he's so afraid (yes, even the Careers get afraid) he'll die, undignified, in his sleep. Dishonoured. (And what, after all, was honour without a fight?)

But maybe, Clove ponders on a particularly bitter night, there is no honourable death. Maybe they all die choking, gagging, _gasping_ for one last breath. Maybe in the last moments, they are not tributes from their districts, destined to fight, but instead small, insignificant people (not children, they've seen too much to be that), who just crave the warmth of their beds.

The night before she dies, the night before Thresh bashes her head in with a rock, Clove dreams of her youngest sister, just now old enough to go for the reaping. Too young to be expected to volunteer, but if the odds aren't in her favour, or the district mayor sees her as an appropriate tribute (wouldn't it be _deliciously_ ironic, to see her live out her sister's fate?) she might. She imagines her sister, with her eerily inquisitive face, watching her at this very moment. Being indoctrinated, the same way Clove found herself. Being taught that compassion and humility are weakness in its most pathetic form, and that vicious, cold-heartedness is the only path to fame.

When Clove is dying, she imagines her sister's eyes, the warmth of her mother's hand pressed against her own, the sound of the birds that awoke her every morning back home. The blood filling her mouth is not honourable; the tremors flittering through her nerves do not feel sweet, or fitting, or right.

_Note: This drabble is based upon the Wilfred Owen war poem 'Dulce et Decorum Est' – written in opposition of the war propaganda that deemed it "sweet" and "fitting" to die for one's country in the first world war. I found it apt._


	5. Peeta & Katniss II

Requested by Kahlia. Kind of. She asked for happy post-marriage fic and this happened. I wouldn't say it's happy. But I also don't know _what_ happy is. Sorry.

**Simple Moments **Number _Fiv_e: Katniss/Peeta

Sometimes, Katniss awakes with a start.

She finds herself back in the arena, back battling the elements, fighting the will to give in, give up, and let go of any hope of going home. It takes a minute of gasping and thrashing about until she realises she is anchored to the softness of her bed by Peeta's arm, and her own memory is the only real threat she faces now.

Katniss takes a long moment to take in the sight of Peeta sleeping. The way his eyelids flutter when he dreams, as if he's fighting to be awake (and don't they all, when nightmares torment?) The way the locks of his hair messily scatter against his forehead. The way she can feel the warmth of his side pressed against her own. The steady rise and fall of his chest. She thinks of everything she has fought in order to secure his presence in her life. She thinks of the times (and weren't there so many?) that she was certain she'd lost him, when his hands gripped around her throat, when his taunts were so stabbing, so sure, so utterly raw. When she could conceive that he _truly_ hated her.

Katniss stares at this man who she loves more than she ever knew possible (perhaps loves more than she can even fathom now or ever), and cannot help but relive every single adversity they have overcome. Not just as a couple, but as humans. As tributes. As victors. The amount of times they'd danced with death – immeasurable. Everyone they'd lost while they, somehow, _impossibly_, survived.

Her heart hurts in a funny way when she looks at him, as if she's already grieving for the fact they cannot spend an eternity together. As if each moment, each memory, could never be enough. As if the millions of words exchanged could never possibly encompass how deeply, how overwhelmingly, she feels – how she could never quite make up for what she feels she owes.

Katniss lets her hands find her wedding ring, smoothing her fingertips over the cool metal as if the very piece of jewellery her touchstone. Before, her pin was the embodiment of who she was, of what she stood for. But now this ring – this perfect, white gold ring – symbolises who she is, who she loves, and who she will always be. A wife to Peeta, a mother to her daughter and son. The Mockingjay pin lives inside a velvet pouch, buried away in a locked drawer. It will always be a part of her; but she will not (_cannot_) let it define her anymore.

She allows herself to smile as he rouses at the sound of the baby, turning to her, wiping the sleep out of his eyes. They are more than pieces in the games, the rebellion.


	6. Foxface

**Simple Moments** Number _Six_: Foxface

Some charm with their confidence, winning over the audience with their reflection on their superb talents, their predictions and premonitions of success and ultimate glory. Others are sweet, innocent, so that they are swarmed with sympathy while the Capitol civilians wipe their candy coloured eyes (because it's simply _too_ much for their frail hearts to bear.) Some scare the onlookers with their brutality, as fear eventuates its way into admiration, as the promise of the _bloodiest_ of games is simply too tempting to ignore.

But this girl, the girl with the 'fox' face, the girl who is too smart for her own good, would slink into anonymity if not for her fire-coloured-hair.

_Foxface_. That becomes her name in the arena once the chaotic slaughter has begun. Her parents had carefully picked her name on the day of her birth, peering into the inquisitive eyes of a newborn that held so much – no, not so much _promise_, as it was simply _too_ much for districts of Panem to put hope in their children – _potential_. Yes. _Potential_. Potential that would _probably_ bleed to death, or starve to death, or else live a mediocre life watching all those that she loved perish in horrid, inhumane ways. Perhaps such a mediocre, forgettable life didn't deserve such a beautiful, meaningful name. But still it was hers. And she held onto it even when everything else escaped her as she ran from the Cornucopia and prayed to something, _anything_, whatever entity the Capitol forbade them from believing in that she might survive just one night.

She envies the girl on fire. The way that she captivated the audience with her volunteering for her sister. The way that she sings to the angelic girl from District 11 while she dies. The way that she fights for not only herself, but for her District partner, and her family back home. These things will make her remembered, even if she does not survive the atrocities of the games. But Foxface is a shadow. A nothing. Another tribute name jotted down in history for posterity's sake but forgotten before the next Games begin. She is a coward, scavenging off the careers while their guards are let down due to exhaustion or overconfidence (or maybe both - she cannot ever be sure.) There is nothing admirable in her demise. Perhaps some will even view it as weak – all that blood, all that gore that the audience _so_ thrives on and _she_ dies with berry stained fingers and lips.

(But _no one_, not even the Capitol, can take her real name away.)


	7. Primrose

Written for the lovely, ever-patient laurenbaggins on Tumblr. She requested this as part of a meme – the prompt was "Nurse Me". Originally I was going to write Peter/Katniss hurt/comfort but this happened instead. I hope you like it, and it's not too OOC. Enjoy.

Character/s: Primrose Everdeen

Warnings: Vivid medical imagery, mention of secondary character death/s, general squick.

* * *

><p>For a child as nervous as Primrose Everdeen, she is most in her element with vulnerable bodies before her on a makeshift surgical bed, various pungent ointments and stinging solutions oozing out of tubes and tubs and into her hands, onto scarred (sun, fire, battle) skin.<p>

Initially, she's really just there to hand her mother things. But after a while, she learns the ropes. The right dosage of sleep syrup. The right roots and leaves to grind up for how long, for which wound, to let sit for how many hours (days, weeks, months – some of these people are never getting better, but at least they can heal their pain a while.)

The first time she can't take it, a man comes in burnt beyond recognition. The raw state of his skin turns her stomach, makes her pinch her nose so she can't breathe in the scent of rotting flesh. Her mother is a professional in these matters (in every part but the certification) and doesn't bat an eyelid, but Prim needs a moment. Pushes herself away from the table. Goes outside. Looks at the sky. Thinks, selfishly, she can't do this anymore. This isn't her responsibility, this isn't – this isn't…

And then she thinks of Katniss, and all the risks she takes for their family. Thinks of her father, buried in part beneath the earth while the rest of him was blasted through the atmosphere by the explosion that took his life, and with it the soul of their family. What if he had survived? What if this man had been her father, writhing against the aching of his body, the unyielding heat radiating, suffocating?

Prim hears the desperate cry of their patient, doesn't hesitate before heading back inside. Immediately she falls back into the old pattern with her mother, words not needed to express instruction, simple nods, pointing. Knowing.

When she watches her sister enter the games, Primrose Everdeen feels helpless. And yet, she knows in so many ways, this is her element. Hunting. Gathering. Hiding. She could so easily curl up and give into the sadness that threatens to consume her, but she fights.

Prim is not a hunter, a gatherer, certainly not a fighter. But she can ease pain. She can heal wounds. She can make a hopeless situation that little bit less desperate. She can nurse.


	8. Finnick

It's the kind of thing they'd probably kill him for if they ever knew he was thinking it, but sometimes Finnick wants to tell the tributes he mentors that it would be better if they died in the arena. 'Victor' is not a title, it's a sentence.

Mags had hinted about it to him, once, the night before his crowning. She'd pulled him into her arms and buried her face into his hair and if he hadn't felt the warmth of her tears against his skin he wouldn't have known she was crying. "Oh my boy," she'd said, "why did you have to go and win?"

He hadn't known then what she'd meant. Hadn't she been the one to grant the gifts from sponsors that saved his life? The food, the medicine, the glorious silver trident? But what he hadn't known, what he couldn't have known, was that gifts weren't the only things sponsors could buy, but people.

He'd said no the first time but then his parents were dead. A fishing accident, the report had read, but the sea was calm and Snow's sympathies laced with insincerity.

He hadn't said no again after that (but he also refused to ever say yes.)

The boy from his district this year reminds him of himself. He's fair and his head is covered in golden curls and dimples and Finnick thinks if he could hear the Capitol crooning, they'd call him angelic. They like angels, Finnick thinks, soft and pure and so dangerously hopeful.

Finnick had been hopeful once, too.

He wants to tell the tributes he mentors that it would be better if they died in the arena. But instead he wishes them luck and does whatever he can to help them survive.


End file.
